North Korea, DR Congo, Uganda
Today's three stories you should know
North Korea
North Korea is deploying a missile unit to Russia that could be equipped with 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers to carry out attacks on Ukraine, according to an exclusive Reuters report. Andrii Cherniak of Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence told the news agency that the unit would be made up of about 90 Korean personnel. Ukraine is short of high-end air defenses and vulnerable to ballistic missiles. Pyongyang is estimated to have sent about 14,000 troops to fight in the Ukraine war, and with up to 6,000 believed killed, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has held public memorial services for the fallen soldiers. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month that the Kremlin had requested an additional 30,000 troops from North Korea.
More from Reuters here.
Episode 10 of The Proximities Podcast is now live. This week, we were joined from the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Dr. Abdou Sebushishe of the International Medical Corps. Dr. Abdou gave us an update from the frontlines, told us personal stories of people who have contracted the virus and reflected on his experiences as a Congolese doctor facing down an outbreak in his own community.
Our conversation is on Apple Podcasts here, Spotify here and YouTube here.
DR Congo
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as it struggles to control the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record. There have been 3,874 cases, resulting in 1,751 deaths, according to figures from DRC’s health ministry. The WHO, though, has said the number is likely much higher because the virus is believed to have widely circulated before the epidemic was officially declared on May 15. Tedros, who is scheduled to meet with DRC’s Preisdent Félix Tshisekedi, said the outbreak is now spreading faster than efforts to fight it.
More from the Independent here.
Uganda
The Ugandan military has built a monument to Yonatan Netanyahu, an older brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was killed when Tel Aviv sent commandos into the East African country to retrieve hostages in 1976. The statue of Yonatan Netanyahu holding an assault rifle was unveiled by army chief Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the son of President Yoweri Museveni, who said he personally commissioned it. Israeli commandos killed dozens of Ugandan soldiers in the assault on Entebbe airport to rescue 106 predominantly Israeli passengers from a hijacked plane, enraging the pro-Palestinian Ugandan President Idi Amin, who cooperated with the hijackers. At the time, the Organization of African Unity, the African Union’s predecessor, called the raid, which is widely celebrated in Israel, a violation of Uganda’s sovereignty.
More from AP here.